In which the pond slacks off in its Sunday meditation ...

 

 

The pond came up short in its search for a suitable subject for a Sunday meditation. 

Yesterday the reptiles tried to create a bit of excitement about Pence in Peril, a bit like Pauline in Peril, but the pond was mainly pleased at the way it screen capped a dissolve between two images ... but it's hardly a patch on a decent illustration ...

 

 

 Ah, the joys of Saturday matinee bondage ...

 It should be obvious by now that only one lizard Oz item caught the pond's eye as suitable fodder - an EXCLUSIVE - and now the pond will do its best to pad it out ...

For a moment, the pond was bewildered.

Were the reptiles harking back to an old story, one that spoke of the ruination of arts courses? It was certainly ideology and it was certainly strangling arts courses ...

More at the Graudian here, and please, with all modesty, isn't that turning of the image into a blurry black and white effect quite striking, and worthy of an arts degree?

Then, being in a ruminative mood, the pond wondered who it was that just now at the lizard Oz, had, in an EXCLUSIVE, discovered that coalition ideology was strangling y'artz?

Mmm, the urbane Urban ...

Well the pond had already filibustered enough, and it was time to get on with the EXCLUSIVE ...

Say what? Conducted by the IPA? That's an exclusive, or what passes for one at the lizard Oz when the urbane Urban is in search of a beat-up? 

 If only there was a still a contest for this sort of thing, and an appropriate award, with attached smell-o-vision ...

You see, Bella's not an EXCLUSIVE ... Bella's as common as muck and always seeking attention, and barking mad to boot, which is why she's so loved by the reptiles ...

 

But hey, it's Sunday ... so let's talk of "devastating consequences" ...

Now at this point the reptiles had an insert, and the pond decided it should blow it up to see what was in it ...

That's it? That's the best Bella has got?

But what would the pond know? After all, it has a post-graduate degree in herpetological studies from the University of Woop Woop, and all it can talk about is the curious way that reptiles crap on about EXCLUSIVES ...

Of course to make it seem like she was doing journalism, the urbane Urban couldn't just stop at an IPA handout.

She had to go off and talk to the usual reptile suspects, and how strange it was to be reminded that there still was a Ramsay Centre ... it all seemed so long ago, the onion muncher, the excitement of the reptiles, the reminders of the great white imperium ...

 

 

By golly, this is turning into one of those greatest reptile hits compiles you're likely to find on YouTube ... the pond especially loved the artwork, featuring those mug shots of Johnny and the Onion Muncher (bands, you'll have to pay a royalty to the pond to acquire that name), but best of all at the top of the page, an earnest teacher explaining a book to earnest young things devoted to the white way. No, it's not a phone, no, you can't text or access TikTok ... so what's the bloody point of it?

 

There's so much more than race, class and sexuality? Perhaps bullshit about an afterlife and Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden and all that mumbo jumbo?

And as for that infiltration of identity politics into the humanities being a worrying trend ...

It's truly beyond a laugh ... there's a mob of self-identifying Catholics introducing Catholic identity politics into the humanities ... and pretending that if the pond turned up to deliver its Atheism 101 course, featuring great writers of the past, it would be a welcome part of the curriculum ...

Don't get the pond started on who it might include ... it could range from Camus to Chekhov, and that's only because the pond landed on "C" in the list of notables at the wiki here ...

And if at the end of the course, the analysis and evidence had led the pond's students to conclude that the Catholic church was a deeply corrupt institution, the original Ponzi scheme, and they'd be better off doing a diploma in herpetology than wasting time at Campion, what a hoot that would be ...

Never mind, the pond is deeply grateful to the urbane Urban for giving the pond a topic for a lazy Sunday, and now there's only a short gobbet to go ... and what do you know, it features good old Donners, a voice long lost to the pond ...

Alas and alack, Donners trotted off to join the Speccie mob, and for some reason no longer turns up in the lizard Oz - who knows the reason for the falling out? - and really, the pond can't be fucked trotting off to the Speccie mob, even if the pickings are rich ...

 

 

Barking mad, as always, and yet here Donners is again, come unto the lizard Oz to redeem January, with a truly wonderous spray to round out the urbane Urban's grate EXCLUSIVE ... which is to say an EXCLUSIVE summary of all the crap the reptiles regularly have regurgitated these many years ...

 

Neo-Marxist mind control ... Catholics in dire peril ... the right to molest children in danger from pesky do-gooders ...

And what about that epic final flurry of floozies, featuring nihilism, identity politics and cancel culture?

Of course the pond has a few gentle, mild criticisms.

The pond applauds that talk of group think ... only Catholics truly know what group think looks like, though the pond has been enjoying the four part HBO doc about Heaven's Gate, if enjoying is the right word ... another astonishing cult, though a lot younger and with a bizarre payoff, though perhaps not as strange as thinking that each Sunday you drink actual human blood and munch on real human flesh. Now that's truly strange ...

But what about "the long march through the institutions"? 

Why didn't that feature? Where's Gramsci when he's needed?

And why were the anarchists left out? Don't they count any more? And what about the surrealists? What a threat they were, and who knows they might even be staging a comeback, because this piece about the decline and fall of the west, up against the Donald, feels bloody surreal ...

Never mind, well done urbane Urban, the pond is eternally grateful, you've saved Sunday. 

Now all that's needed is a romp with the immortal Rowe, with more Rowe here, and all is well in the world of nihilistic Catholicism and the cancelled Donald ...

 

 

 

For some unearthly reason, the pond was reminded by that vision of another vision of paradise ...

 

 

 

 

But enough already with the malarkey ...